A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
AN ACT
for non-partisan automated congressional redistricting.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS:
SECTION 1. The Election Code, is amended to add Chapter 279,
Congressional Redistricting, to read as follows:
§ 279.001. Conflict and Severability.
Any conflicting provisions of the Texas code are hereby repealed, and if
any provisions of this act are found to be unconstitutional, the
remaining provisions shall remain in full force and effect.
§ 279.002. Schedule and Effect of Congressional Districts.
(1) The source code for the production version of the computer
redistricting software and the database shall be made accessible for
downloading from the web site of the Texas Legislative Council
(hereafter TLC) for public examination and comment, and to be shared
with other states and communities, at no cost.
(2) Changes to the production version of computer redistricting software
and the database shall be suspended from September 1 of the first
odd-numbered year following the decennial census, provided that census
data are available, until it is used by the end of November of that year
to draw the districts to be used in the next general election, unless
the TLC shall order remediations.
(3) Public hearings shall be held during that September to identify any
problems with the software or database. Needed changes shall be made and
approved by the TLC by October 20 of that year.
(4) During November of that year a number of congressional district maps
equal to twice the number of members of the TLC shall be automatically
generated according to the specifications set forth in § 279.003.
(5) Maps generated according to (4) shall be reviewed by members of the
TLC, each member shall have the right to reject one map; and the final
map shall then be selected at random from among those maps remaining,
which shall go into effect for the next election, and shall remain in
effect for the members of the United States House of Representatives
elected during that election until the end of their session preceding
inauguration of the next-elected members; but a successor district map
may go into effect as provided above for the following election, if
authorized by this code.
§ 279.003. Specifications for Automatic Redistricting Software.
(1) The initial software to be used is the Target package, written in
the Scheme language, with a user interface written in Visual Basic,
which has already been developed as of the date of the enabling Act for
this code.
(2) The TLC shall have the authority to substitute other computer
software of equal or greater capabilities, with such further development
as may be directed by the TLC, but any such software must be authorized
to be fully disclosed and shared with the public, and each must generate
maps randomly so that each map is unpredictable except for meeting the
specifications or constraints set forth in (4) below.
(3) The number of congressional districts shall be that which is set by
United States law, and the database shall contain the relevant data from
the most recent national census.
(4) The specifications for the automatic redistricting software shall be
as follows:
(a) The population of each district shall not differ from that of
any of the other districts by more than a factor of 0.0001.
(b) Only counties with a population of more than a factor of 1/3 of
the average population of a congressional district may be split,
unless a larger number must be split to meet the specification (a)
above, and a smaller number of counties shall be split if
specification (a) can be met without reducing the compactness of
districts according to (e) below.
(c) Districts must be contiguous.
(d) Districts must be simply connected, so that any continuous loop
of points within the district may be shrunk to a point within the
district.
(e) Districts shall be maximally compact, resulting from a running
time of at least 6 and not to exceed 24 hours, with compactness
defined by minimizing the value of pē/4(pi)A, where p = perimeter
and A = area of the district.
(f) Such other specifications as may be required by United States
law or court decision, provided that such specifications
unambiguously define a directive to to automatic operation of the
computer software, and not a particular map.
§ 279.004. Supervision of the Automatic Redistricting Operation.
(1) The actual operation of the software to automatically generate the
maps shall be subject to supervision of a county grand jury, the county
to be selected at random, or their deputies or experts, who shall be
charged to insure that there is no tampering with the software,
database, or operation of the systems involved.
(2) If feasible and permissible under United States law, the software
shall run on a restricted database containing only the information
needed to meet the above specifications.
SECTION 2. This Act takes effect September 1, 2003.
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For this document in RTF see
http://www.constitution.org/reform/us/tx/redistrict/redist_draft01.rtf
For more on this see
http://www.constitution.org/reform/us/tx/redistrict/cnpr.htm